Fibre Channel (FC) Host Bus Adapters(HBA) are interface cards that connects the host system to a fibre channel network or devices. The two major manufacturers of FC HBAs are QLogic and Emulex and the drivers for many HBAs are distributed in-box with the Operating Systems. If the drivers are not available on your Linux version, you need to install them manually and load the modules in kernel
Here is a step by step guide to verify that your FC HBAs installed and configured correctly.
Step-1: Determine the Manufacturer and Model of the HBAs.
Run the lspci command to list all PCI cards detected on the system.
# lspci | grep "Fibre Channel"
07:00.0 Fibre Channel: QLogic Corp. ISP2532-based 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA (rev 02)
0a:00.0 Fibre Channel: QLogic Corp. ISP2532-based 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA (rev 02)
The above output shows the system bus has detected two QLogic HBAs.
Step-2: Get the Vendor and Device IDs for the HBAs installed.
These can be obtained from the file /usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids
# vi /usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids
.....
1077 QLogic Corp.
2532 ISP2532-based 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA
.....
The vendor id for QLogic is 1077 and the device id is 2532. You could confirm this using the lspci -nn command as shown below
# lspci -nn | grep "Fibre Channel"
07:00.0 Fibre Channel [0c04]: QLogic Corp. ISP2532-based 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA [1077:2532] (rev 02)
0a:00.0 Fibre Channel [0c04]: QLogic Corp. ISP2532-based 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA [1077:2532] (rev 02)
Step-3: Check if the driver modules are installed.
This can be done by searching the list of available modules. (Replace 2.6.18-308.el5PAE with your kernel version in the command below)
# grep 1077 /lib/modules/2.6.18-308.el5PAE/modules.* | grep 2532
/lib/modules/2.6.18-308.el5PAE/modules.alias:alias pci:v00001077d00002532sv*sd*bc*sc*i* qla2xxx
/lib/modules/2.6.18-308.el5PAE/modules.pcimap:qla2xxx 0x00001077 0x00002532 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x0
The above output shows that this HBA is supported by the module qla2xxx
Step-4: Check if the drivers for these HBAs are loaded in the kernel.
The lsmod command will list the currently loaded kernel modules
# lsmod | grep qla2xxx
qla2xxx 1205905 0
scsi_transport_fc 44745 1 qla2xxx
scsi_mod 144277 16 be2iscsi, ib_iser, iscsi_tcp, bnx2i, libcxgbi, libiscsi2, scsi_transport_iscsi2, scsi_dh, sr_mod, sg, usb_storage, qla2xxx, scsi_transport_fc, libata,cciss, sd_mod
The output shows the module qla2xxx is loaded by the kernel. If you don't see any output for lsmod command then you can load the module using modprobe command
# modprobe -v qla2xxx
Step-5: Getting detailed information
You can find detailed information about the fibre channel adapters in the location /sys/class/fc_host/
# ll /sys/class/fc_host/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Feb 5 11:28 host3
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Feb 5 11:28 host4
The directories host3 and host4 in the example above contains information specific to each adapter like node name (WWN), port name (WWN), type, speed,state etc.,
An easier way to get this information is to use the systool command.
# systool -c fc_host
Class = "fc_host"
Class Device = "host3"
Device = "host3"
Class Device = "host4"
Device = "host4"
The -v option gives you detailed output
# systool -c fc_host -v host3
Class = "fc_host"
Class Device = "host3"
Class Device path = "/sys/class/fc_host/host3"
fabric_name = "0x50014380272531e9"
issue_lip =
node_name = "0x50014380281412e9"
port_id = "0x0000e8"
port_name = "0x50014380281412e8"
port_state = "Online"
port_type = "LPort (private loop)"
speed = "8 Gbit"
supported_classes = "Class 3"
supported_speeds = "1 Gbit, 2 Gbit, 4 Gbit, 8 Gbit"
symbolic_name = "HPAK344A FW:v5.06.03 DVR:v8.03.07.09.05.08-k"
system_hostname = ""
tgtid_bind_type = "wwpn (World Wide Port Name)"
uevent =
Device = "host3"
Device path = "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:07:00.0/host3"
edc =
fw_dump =
nvram = "ISP "
optrom_ctl =
optrom =
reset =
sfp = ""
uevent =
vpd = "&"
